Remember Growth

Why We Don’t Remember Pandemics

Mark Honigsbaum | Engelsberg Ideas | 19th July 2022

The millions who died in World War One are remembered in countless memorials. The millions who died afterwards of Spanish Flu are remembered almost nowhere. There is some logic in this: The war-dead are being offered as role models. But in memorialising the war-dead we also remind ourselves of the terrors and costs of war. We should memorialise our pandemic-dead in that same spirit (1,150 words)

from The Browser five years ago

Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant?

Adair Turner | INET | 21st July 2017

Yes. As a limit-case imagine that a hundred years from now solar-powered robots deliver most goods and services. The cost of this will be trivial — and so, therefore, will be the contribution to measurable GDP. Almost all measurable GDP will come from impossible-to-automate domains such as rent and royalties. “Productivity growth will be close to nil, but also irrelevant to human welfare” (1,009 words)